Pasadena, L.A. and Soccer Can All Win : Galaxy: Solve Rose Bowl legal and traffic problems and find a willing venue by moving the team’s games to the Coliseum.
There was good news and bad news for the good people of Pasadena in the return of professional soccer to the Rose Bowl last weekend.
The good news is that the debut of Major League Soccer was a smash. It was so successful that after just one game, the public agency that runs the old stadium has already made $150,000, half of the money it had hoped to get by renting its football field to the Los Angeles Galaxy for all its home games in this first MLS season.
Unfortunately, the bad news is also that the debut was a smash--so successful that Saturday night’s crowd was more than twice what the team’s management had expected.
Before the game, Galaxy officials were predicting a crowd in the range of 30,000 people. They got closer to 70,000. So many fans showed up that a nearby freeway offramp had to be shut down.
This proves that Galaxy management is capable of making the same mistake that the folks who run the Rose Bowl, the Pasadena police and even my esteemed colleagues at this newspaper routinely make: underestimating the potential popularity of professional soccer in the greater Los Angeles area.
Did I say “potential”? Count that as a writing mistake I won’t make again.
Twice since the first of the year, big-time soccer matches have drawn larger crowds in Los Angeles than the National Football League’s now-departed, and unlamented, Raiders and Rams drew during their last season here. Or has everyone forgotten the 88,000 people who showed up last Jan. 21 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for a game between Mexico and Brazil? The Galaxy opener at the Rose Bowl outdrew opening day at Dodger Stadium.
Potential, shmotential. Soccer’s big league in L.A., and it’s here to stay.
And that is the not unpleasant, but very real, problem Pasadena now has to deal with. The city signed a two-year contract with the Galaxy, which will play 16 games and three nonleague matches at the Rose Bowl this year. That means there could be more than 30 dates in the near future when crowds as big as last Saturday’s could descend on the quiet residential neighborhoods surrounding the Rose Bowl.
Those lovely canyons are home to usually pleasant and patient people who are willing to tolerate one big mob a year. That happens on New Year’s Day when the traditional college football game that made Pasadena world-famous is held, drawing in excess of 100,000 people. Occasionally, a crowd that big will show up when UCLA, which plays half a dozen home football games there a year, plays archrival USC.
The residents of tony neighborhoods like Annandale and Linda Vista will even grit their teeth and tolerate a classy event like the Olympic or World Cup soccer finals.
But try to get any more big events than those into the Rose Bowl and you’ve got both a legal and political problem.
The legal problem arises from a Pasadena ordinance that bars the Rose Bowl from holding more than 12 events each year that draw more than 20,000 people per event. When the city and the Galaxy signed their contract, team officials were hoping for crowds in the range of 20,000 per game.
That ordinance can be modified, but that brings up the political challenge: convincing the Rose Bowl’s neighbors to tolerate the inconvenience of large crowds for the sake of the money that will flow into city coffers. Pasadena Mayor William Paparian and other city leaders are putting up a brave front for now, but it would be unwise for anyone to assume that they can sell the brave new world of L.A. soccer to the Rose Bowl’s neighbors. Especially when a better solution lies just 10 miles south on the Pasadena Freeway: the Los Angeles Coliseum. That recently refurbished stadium is not only happy to host soccer games like the Mexico-Brazil match, it is desperate to do so now that it’s down to one regular tenant, the USC football team.
Galaxy officials are dubious about the Coliseum for the same reasons the Rams and Raiders, who both played there, were: concerns about the stadium’s age, insufficient parking and the lack of amenities like luxury suites for high-rolling fans.
But all those are fixable. Indeed, the Coliseum Commission, which oversees the stadium for the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California, all of which have property in the surrounding Exposition Park area, has plans on the drawingboard to do all that, and more. They just need someone to pay for it.
If Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is the smart businessman that everyone gives him credit for being, he’ll help the Coliseum Commission find the funds and get them moving fast on a proposal to the Galaxy. Some folks in Pasadena will be unhappy about it, but not all of them.
